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Finland has also done some interesting things with government innovation . They use a gaming platform to get citizens to help solve small government projects which they call micro-tasking . The results for Finland are something like a million tasks that have been solved by citizens ’ support and solutions .
Code for America is an organization that uses tech-savvy individuals to build apps for all levels of government . Basically they go into a state or other level of government and build an app . Then , they make it open to other governments across the country .
Are there any examples of governments around the world that have used Design Thinking ?
ML : Yes , there are some really interesting ones :
The Mexican government has a citizen engagement platform that uses a communications channel between citizenship and state government . While it seemed risky at first , it has resulted in a huge boost in the relationship and confidence levels , and in the transparency of government .
Innovation Norway is a central service agency of the government that acts as an interface between government and industry . Its mandate is to find solutions to government challenges and to ensure innovative industry approaches are leveraged by the government .
They have offices in Norway , Sweden and 30 other countries worldwide ( including in Toronto ), to cast a wide net in looking at innovative thinking and promoting innovation of Norwegian businesses .
The UK has been a great leader in the idea of innovation in government with an organization called NESTA 5 . They have embedded design principles in creating digital services for its citizens . NESTA is a government-funded organization that helps drive innovation inside of the government and often brings together public and private sectors . It crowdsources many of its solutions . It very much focuses on the principle of working hard to make things simple - which is a really key principle of design . For example , building digital services , not just websites .
Finland has also done some interesting things with government innovation . They use a gaming platform to get citizens to help solve small government projects which they call micro-tasking . The results for Finland are something like a million tasks that have been solved by citizens ’ support and solutions .
If you look to the United States , there are some extraordinary successes in government innovation . One of the biggest and most powerful is Code for America which is an organization that uses tech-savvy individuals to build apps for all levels of government . Basically they go into a state or other level of government and build an app . Then , they make it open to other governments across the country . It ’ s a really interesting private endeavor that now is also supported by government .
It is interesting . In a lot of these cases the development has much more open innovation brought into the front end .
ML : Yes , and it also allows for further iteration and scaling which are all part of design thinking .
In terms of leading innovation , what impact does the current focus on performance-based management have on innovation ?
ML : There is a fundamental challenge with performance management . I used to think that evidence-based management was the problem . But actually , that ’ s not really the problem . Rather , it is what we consider as evidence for innovation , which is different from when you are executing an existing business model .
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